


Overwhelmingly Underwhelming

by yikesola



Series: Bingo2019 [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Coming Out, Established Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 03:09:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21047315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Phoebe can feel how the planes of her face have fallen, gone flat and hard. It’s only half a minute before Dani’s face falls too, to mirror hers. Phoebe’s speaking before she even recognizes that she’s had the idea. “What if I came out to them?”A fic about hiding and coming out.





	Overwhelmingly Underwhelming

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [phandomficfests](http://phandomficfests.tumblr.com/) Bingo Fest!  
Bingo Prompt: Date Night In, Hide and Seek, Dry Humping, In-Laws  
Betaed by the ever-thoughtful [templeofshame](http://templeofshame.tumblr.com/) !

Everything in the world just feels more right on days when Dani is up north. It’s not that Phoebe doesn’t manage to get things done on the days between visits, it’s not that she doesn’t still love time spent with her friends that actually live nearby or with her parents or making videos. It’s just that things are a little more grey when Dani isn’t there beside her, smiling that smile Phoebe’s hooked on and saying something that makes them both break down into laughter. 

And she’s trying not to think about how much her whole life has changed in the two months since Dani made her first trip north, but sometimes she can’t believe she’s the same person she’d been for the twenty-two years before that— it seems impossible. The Phoebe before this new life was never this happy, she was never this understood, she was never this nervous that everything could fall apart. Now that she knows how good life is with Dani there beside her, the thought of returning to a Dani-less existence is unbearable. It’s a thought she can push from her mind most daylight hours. Her anxiety acts up most when she’s laying in bed trying to sleep. It’s why Skyping with Dani until the wee hours is one of her favourite pastimes. 

Besides, that anxiety is usually shoved aside when they’re in the same place. Doubly so when they’re on Phoebe’s turf. Triply so when they have the house to themselves all day because her parents had to go into Manchester. They’re not expected back until evening. 

It reminds Phoebe of their first weekend, spent alone and soaking in all the freedom that came with it. It reminds Phoebe of their week together earlier in the month, also alone, also free of the charade she needs to put on for her parents. The charade of their totally heterosexual daughter with a totally heterosexual best friend who travels a suspicious number of distance and times to spend visits doing totally heterosexual activities. 

Phoebe feared the first few visits that her parents might pick up on what’s going on. And then they didn’t. And she wonders if she played the charade a little too well or if heteronormativity really is that pervasive. 

But she doesn’t worry about that while she and Dani have the day to themselves. When there alone, that anxiety is nothing more than a hum under her skin. Much more important is every other emotion Dani makes her feel. 

They sleep in late, snuggling into each other with soft warm skin touching everywhere it can. They indulge in a three hour breakfast that turns into snacking well into lunch — Dani teases they could’ve called it brunch if they only had mimosas and Phoebe plants a smiling kiss on her forehead as she promises to make some next time. They curl up on the playroom couch to watch movie after movie, the majority of which they ignore in favor of make out sessions and talking about everything and nothing, the way they do on Skype when they’re far apart but now with the benefit of their limbs tangled up together. 

It’s a good way to pass the day. A quick succession of busy nothings. Busy being happy.

They’re surprised by the time when Phoebe’s phone buzzes and she sees it is 4:38pm. The buzzing is a text from Ian, asking if she and Dani are free tonight to go out for a drink. The glint in Dani’s eye when Phoebe asks her is answer enough— they’d spent this long in pyjamas, no need to explore the outside world now. A date night in is all either of them want. 

Phoebe microwaves some of her mother’s leftover pasta bake from the fridge which serves as her and Dani’s pre-dinner meal. They know they’ll dig into something later, but for now it soothes the appetite that another growth spurt demands of them. With a forkful of food making its way to her mouth, Dani teases that soon she’ll be taller than Phoebe. 

“Fine by me, Howell,” Phoebe laughs, “so long as you don’t hide sweets on the top shelf.”

“Don’t give me ideas!” Dani pokes her. 

*

By the time they look at a clock again, another hour has passed. That’s the only thing Phoebe hates about Dani’s visits— the time leading up to them is horribly slow, and the time they have together zooms by. 

Dani is laying across Phoebe’s bed with her head dangling off the side to rest on Phoebe’s shoulder as she sits on the floor when she whines about it. “Our first day is almost over.” 

“We’re literally going to be awake until three in the morning,” Dani says as she turns her face to plant an upside down kiss on Phoebe’s neck. “We’re barely through the first day.”

“Yeah but when my parents get back it’ll be...” she shakes her head and sighs, “different.” 

Maybe there’s one more thing about Dani’s visits that Phoebe doesn’t like. The fact that they highlight how stressed she is by still being closeted to her parents. Despite uni dalliances, she’d never felt compelled to come out to them. She wanted to wait until she was with someone. Until there was a reason to tell them. And now she has that, with Dani, but still she’s dragging her feet. Dani isn’t upset with her about it; she isn’t out to her own parents after all. But she also admits that Phoebe’s relationship with her parents looks completely different than her relationship with her own. 

So having the parents around will be different. Most of it will even be instinctual. A little more distance between them when they sit on the sofa. No more kisses the second they feel like it. A cap on the more salacious banter. They’re both well-versed in it, but it’s always a little more work. A little more strain. 

Phoebe feels warmth course through her limbs when Dani says softly in her ear, “Let’s make good use of the time we do have, then. Hide and seek, Lester?” 

She smiles and covers her hands with her eyes. “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen...” she begins counting down. She hears Dani giggle and scramble off the bed, then hears her footsteps somewhere down the hall. 

Fuck, she loves Dani so much... she’s never had someone who just knows how to make her feel better, by listening or being silly or getting mad on her behalf. But Dani does all of that like it’s innate. 

She doesn’t give Dani much of a countdown. And she has the distinct advantage of having grown up in this house where countless hours of hide and seek were played with Martyn. So when Phoebe steps into the hallway and sees that the cord which would pull down the attic ladder is swinging back and forth as though pushed by a nonexistent breeze, she shakes her head at Dani’s rookie mistake. 

The old familiar creak of the ladder being pulled down makes Phoebe feel young in the way many things from the old house does. She climbs up and searches through the dim light for any Dani-shaped shadow. 

After looping around and finding nothing, she hears a voice carrying from below. “Olly olly oxen free!” 

Phoebe scampers down the steps and runs into her room to see Dani sitting crosslegged on the bed with a smug smile on her face. 

“How—”

“Knew you’d fall for that,” Dani says, rolling back with laughter. When she can breathe again she explains that she’d smacked the pull cord on her way to hiding in the bathtub. It was after she heard the creak that she knew it’d actually worked. “You’re too easy, Feebs!” 

Phoebe jumps onto the bed, pinning a still laughing Dani below her. “I’ll have you know I was being gallant,” she says, “My parents always told me there was a wolf in the attic, I had to make sure it wasn’t eating my girlfriend up there.”

“Oh don’t worry, your girlfriend hasn’t been eaten for hours,” Dani says with a wicked grin and a thrust up of her hips which Phoebe answers with a thrust down. 

Meeting the challenge in Dani’s smirk, Phoebe adjusts their position while still keeping her pinned— easy enough since Dani wasn’t trying in any way to get unpinned— so they each have a thigh of the other’s between their legs. Phoebe’s arms began to shake a little, something she hoped Dani wouldn’t notice, from the effort of holding her upper half up like she was. Maybe a few planks or push ups would be a good idea, she thinks. 

But then she lowers herself, something her biceps are grateful for because they can relax. Something her hips are grateful for as they meet Dani’s again. Something her lips are grateful for as they find Dani’s neck. She pushes Dani’s silky straightened hair away with her nose and kisses again. Dani sighs below her. 

Phoebe moves her hips again, in a halfhearted rhythm that Dani meets. It’s not doing much, but it’s doing enough. Dani’s thigh is warm even through the fabric of both of their pyjama pants. When she lets Dani’s arms lose, they’re tangled in Phoebe’s long hair. 

The sound of a car door slamming in the driveway makes them both freeze. 

They’re not in as compromising a position as they might’ve been, less than ten minutes of dry humping giving them only messy hair and breath they’re quick to catch. Still, by the time her mum’s voice is calling out, “Girls!” from downstairs, Phoebe feels her stomach dropping in the same way it always does when she tiptoes back into the closet. 

“Be right down!” she shouts. 

Dani smiles at her, looking ready to giggle at what could be considered a close call. Phoebe can feel how the planes of her face have fallen, gone flat and hard. It’s only half a minute before Dani’s face falls too, to mirror hers. 

Phoebe’s speaking before she even recognizes that she’s had the idea. “What if I came out to them?” 

Dani moves out from under Phoebe and sits down by the foot of the bed. “Yeah?” she says, in an aggravatingly uncommitted tone. 

Phoebe almost wishes Dani had shown either dread or excitement. Some cues she could follow. Of course, she knows Dani is giving her this space for a reason. 

“Yeah,” she says, with a little more conviction than she really feels. “They’ll— it’ll be...” She isn’t sure. 

“You don’t _have_ to,” Dani says. 

“I know.”

“Unless you want to.” 

“I think I want to.” The longer she sits with the idea, the more it feels like something she can face, scary though it is. More like something she’s been meaning to do for a while. She wonders if half the heaviness in her gut is from putting it off, not from the actual secret itself.

She knows it won’t make all her anxiety go away. If anything it’ll just make the anxiety shift— instead of hiding from her parents she’ll be stressed over the new reality of them knowing, of their reaction. Of what her day to day life would look like without the singular worry of _hiding, hiding, hiding_. It will be scary to navigate. She remembers how naked she felt when her friends first knew. 

But the twist in her stomach when she thinks of her parents shuffling downstairs and Dani here in her bed, the twist that means the people she loves most in the world can’t currently know what they mean to her or to each other? 

She wants to untwist it. 

Dani is finally showing some emotion. Phoebe’s heart aches when she realizes it’s a frown. 

“Will they...” she clears her throat. “You think they’ll like me?” 

Phoebe laughs without meaning to. It feels nice to have the focus shifted away from her and her own feelings; bless Dani’s occasional selfishness. “They’ve already met you, dork. They already love you.” 

“It’s different,” Dani shrugs. 

Phoebe nods. 

*

Roughly seventy times over the course of dinner, Phoebe thinks the words “I’m gay” are gonna come spilling out of her. But it seems that a lifetime of choking the declaration down makes it difficult to say out loud. 

Instead the meal passes with her parents recounting how their day in town was spent, and Dani charming the hell out of them like she always does while Phoebe rips her paper towel to shreds in her lap. They’re tossed into a game of _Scrabble_ after dinner, which Dani offers to help Nigel set up while Phoebe offers to help Kath clear the table. 

“How long is Dani staying this time, dear?” her mum asks her once they’re in the kitchen. 

“Few days,” Phoebe says. “Then maybe once more before Christmas if she can get the time off work, to help with some videos.” 

“That’ll be nice,” she smiles. “Reminds me of Lucy, that girlfriend I had when I was young. You remember, I think you met her at Sharon’s wedding?” 

Phoebe hums out something affirmative enough. 

“Yes,” Kath goes on. “We used to spend all our time together. Some friends are better in small doses, but sometimes people just get on.” 

“Mum,” Phoebe says with her hands gripping the pile of plates ready to be loaded in the machine. “I uhh... I don’t think you’ve ever had a girlfriend like Dani. I think Lucy was your, err, your friend.” 

“Well, yes, of course that’s what I meant,” Kath says lightly, taking the plates from Phoebe’s grip. 

“I have a... she’s...” Phoebe clears her throat, looking at her feet. “Dani is my _girlfriend_ girlfriend.” 

She doesn’t look up until she hears the dishes rattling as the dishwasher drawer is pushed in and the door closed. Her mum, stood with her back to her, says in a voice a little too restrained, “That’s nice, love.” 

All of Phoebe feels oddly deflated by this non-reaction. The anxious corners of her brain had been prepping for anger, for disappointment. The wild optimism she could’ve mustered had been prepping for something _more_. But she doesn’t want to push her luck. Maybe this is as good as she deserves. She looks back down at her feet. 

Her mum makes her way back towards the dining room, stopping to get on her tiptoes and press a kiss to Phoebe’s cheek on the way. 

She follows her to the table robotically, making steps without any conscious decision to. She’s stopped looking at her feet in time to see her mum on her tiptoes again, this time to kiss Dani’s cheek. 

Dani’s eyes are wide and her rosy patch in bloom at the gesture, but Kath pats the cheek she’d just kissed and says, “I hope you can make it back up before Christmas, Dani. We love having you round.” 

“Oh yeah,” Dani says with a choked laugh, “depends if my manager’s being a dick or not when he makes the schedule, but hopefully I can.” 

Kath then looks at Phoebe and tilts her head with a question in her expression in the direction of Nigel who is already pondering over his letters. 

“Oh,” Phoebe jumps. Then, because everything feels a little like a dream anyways with the way the adrenaline coursing through her veins is slowing down time itself, she says as casually as she’s ever said anything before in her life, “Dad, I’m gay.” 

Her father looks up, a crease in his brow that thankfully implies more confusion than anger. 

“That’s nice, love,” he says.

Some sort of tension that had formed an amber encasement around Phoebe’s spine all night breaks. She barks out an almost hysterical laugh and folds over into herself. “That’s what mum said,” she says between the gasps for air. She notices a minute later that someone’s arms are around her. She notices two minutes later that it’s Dani. 

Her parents, she can see through her tears, look almost like they could laugh with her if they’d let themselves. Dani stops holding back when Phoebe grabs her hand and laughs out, “Also, Dani’s my girlfriend.” They laugh almost in time with one another. “She was worried you wouldn’t like her.” 

“Of course we like her,” Kath says, sounding almost offended at the idea. “We love her. We love you!” 

“That’s nice,” Dani says, half whispered and half giggled so that thankfully only Phoebe heard the gentle teasing of her parents’ obscenely blasé response to her coming out. “Will you still love me when I kick your butt at _Scrabble_?” she says a little louder.

“We’ll cross that bridge _if_ we get to it,” Nigel smiles. 

*

“It wasn’t perfect,” Phoebe says that night as her blue and green duvet shields her and Dani from the entire world. 

“No coming out is, I think,” Dani says, “Let me know when you hear of one.”

“But it was good.” 

Dani nods. “Very good! They said they love me.” 

“Your quest to be the ultimate daughter-in-law is going perfectly,” Phoebe smiles. “I need to step up my game. When’s your mum’s birthday?”

Dani shoves her shoulder. “February, but calm down, Lester. I’m not coming out to mine any time soon.” 

“To quote my very beautiful and smart girlfriend, you don’t have to unless you want to.” 

“I don’t want to.” Even in the dark, Phoebe knows the unmovable expression on Dani’s face at that. 

“Then I’ll continue to charm your mum as your completely platonic gal pal,” Phoebe whispers as she moves closer to Dani. She kisses her. “Thank you,” she says.

“For?”

“Everything, idiot.” Phoebe kisses her again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/188370720114/overwhelmingly-underwhelming) !


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